Goggle Eyes
by dorian dark
Summary: What do Percy's famous horn-rimmed glasses say about him? And what does Oliver really think of them? Sometimes, glasses just get in the way...P/O, a bit of fluff, a bit of language, a bit of angst. And a whole lot of drunken dancing and cold coffee.
1. Chapter 1

_Haven't written anything in the HP fandom for a while, but it feels so good to be back! This is the first in a five-part series of scenes from Percy Weasley's youth, revolving around his glasses and his relationship with Oliver Wood. Pretty random, but I hope you enjoy. Any feedback is very gratefully received :) _

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He almost cries, because it's just another excuse for the twins to tease him. He's lived his life in badges and symbols, in his house scarf, his books clamped resolutely under one arm, the frown ruffled across his brow, and now he has another to set him apart.

His mother realises, because she always does, and tells him, how about, he can have one of the really _nice _cases, maybe the suede one with little owls stamped on it, or the Chudley Cannons one in bright orange metal. Percy chooses a dark crocodile skin case, because he thinks it looks adult, and the novelty Muggle cleaning rag inside is a pleasing shade of navy. It costs three Sickles and he sees his mother scrape together a handful of Knuts to make up the last Sickle.

The frames are another matter. There's an elegant rimless pair that he thinks might not be _too _bad, and he starts concocting an adapted Vanishing charm in his head that would make the bloody things invisible to bullying eyes. But it turns out they're not covered by St Mungo's bursaries, and the Healer nudges him gently towards a dusty rack of ugly, clumsy frames, all stupid angles and bars.

The shame pooling in his stomach, he points dully at the least offensive pair, a horn-rimmed affair with little golden hinges, and the Healer fits them with a tap of her wand, and sends Percy away with the glasses still uncomfortable on his nose and the world just a little too sharply in focus. Things seem far away and too close all together, and he feels high up, the streets deep and menacing. For the first time it strikes him that in a way he's ill, he has a disease, an incurable and degenerative disease, and he hates his perfect brothers even more, even if Bill does have an ingrown toenail on his right foot.

He sinks into sullen silence at home, and he takes his glasses off at random intervals, puts them down in unexpected places, and perfects his Summoning spells finding the blasted things again. He realises how old his parents are, and how faded.

His father tries to cheer him up, and says, 'well, look, son, I wear glasses too, always have done, and look what a woman _I _managed to snag,' and Percy loves his parents, he really does, but it's not entirely a comfort. His father, with his absent-minded tinkering and soft belly and mounting debts and utter lack of ambition – Percy realises quickly, that summer, that happiness means different things to different people, and wonders if it was ever on his agenda.

Mercifully, the twins get sick of teasing him fairly quickly (though he suspects slow, steady, understanding Charlie might have something to do with it) and a little pink dent forms on either side of his nose that never quite goes away. His mother won't let him degnome the garden, in case he breaks his glasses, so he sits in his room with the windows open, listening to the hum of summer, and reads the holidays away, pausing occasionally to push his new accessory back up his nose.

The night before fourth year begins, he lies awake and wrestles with the chilling dread in his fingertips. He swings between frustration at his own idiocy, and trembling shame, and in the morning he tucks his glasses into their case and leaps nimbly down the familiar stairs at the Burrow, and tells his mother 'I don't want to break them' when she asks where they are.

He's sitting in a compartment alone on the Hogwarts Express, a headache pooling in his temples as he struggles with _The Perfect Woman: Transfiguration, Metamorpmagi and the Feminist Critique_, pretending the scenery streaming past the window is not blurred. The door slides noisily open and another boy, still in Muggle clothes, throws himself down opposite Percy.

'Perce, mate! How was your summer?'

Percy squints momentarily, and admits defeat with a downcast look, pulling his glasses out of their case and pushing them onto his face.

'Oh, Oliver,' he says quietly. 'Um. I had a nice summer, thanks. Did quite a bit of reading. You?'

'Oh, yeah, fantastic, actually. Dad took me to see Scotland play the Czech Republic, and we were _right _behind the goals…literally, I just about wet myself.'

Percy folds his lips in on themselves to stop himself from giggling. He's forgotten how Oliver can be, a little reminiscent of a puppy-dog, with expressive brown eyes and enough energy for the whole Quidditch team.

'Did Scotland win, then?' he asks, looking out of the window. They're speeding through the West Midlands now, high Victorian chimneys rising red and dirty from the smog.

'Course not,' Oliver scoffs. 'But it was class anyway. How about it, then, Perce? You trying out for the team then?'

An uncomfortable lump that could be dread, could be tears, settles in his throat as he thinks of flying, thinks of hours reading different manuals on broom control and effective feints, bewitching a Quaffle to rebound from an invisible wall halfway down the field. He's been getting better – he doesn't have Fred and George's wiry strength or Charlie's speed, but he's nimble enough and he doesn't mind the lurch of the broom when he spirals away to avoid a Bludger. And then his mother decides it's too risky, with his new glasses, which _did not come cheap_, and the clunky Comet Two Thirty is handed down to Ginny and Percy turns to his other, static love: books.

'No…don't think so. Got to concentrate on my work, you know. OWLs, and all that.'

'We've all got work, Perce. Come _on, _we need a decent new Chaser…'

Oliver talks like he's an old hand, when he only made the team in the summer of third year, capitalising on the stray Bludger that took out Jackson Blythe's leg in the Ravenclaw match. He always looks a bit uncomfortable out of his scarlet Quidditch robes, his tie always a little untidy and his cheeks usually less than clean. Percy remembers being happy for his friend, finding his niche, and pushes aside the nagging suspicion that he's still searching for his own.

'Well, get _you_, sorting out the strategy…'

'I could put a word in for you, yeah? You could probably skip the prelims, I know you're good enough.'

Percy blushes. 'Ol, I really can't,' he says miserably. 'My. Well, my mum won't let me, actually.' He hates himself for the little pompous note that wheedles into his speech, distancing himself, daring Oliver to challenge him.

'Your _mum_? Why the hell not?'

Percy motions silently at his glasses.

'Oh…you got glasses? Mate, I didn't even bloody realise! They're sort of cool, actually. Sort of…distinguished.'

Percy resists sentimentality and the urge to say something tearfully grateful for Oliver's nonchalance, but it wells up in his chest anyway, and he turns back to the window, smiling a little.

Alicia Spinnet gets the gig in the end, and acquits herself well, and Percy enjoys the action well enough from the stands. Oliver helps him find his glasses every morning and never calls him 'four-eyes', apart from the one time when he falls asleep on his desk and wakes up with the rims of his glasses carving neat half-moons beneath his eyes. Even Percy has to laugh.

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_Next time...bad pop music, an awkward conversation, and a wholly predictable kiss. _

_Review?_


	2. Chapter 2

_Et voila, the second part. Thanks to my reviewers so far, hope you all enjoy this! xx_

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It grows cold – _he _grows cold – and Penelope happens, comes and goes, and NEWTs weigh him down, and Hogwarts is not the comfort it once was. He saves up enough money for a new pair of glasses, and by now he's used to the slightly blinkered feeling, the narrowed vision and the constant pressure of the arms behind his ears. It's one of his favourite distractions, in the middle of an essay or an exam or an argument, to take off his glasses, feel his face, weightless, and see nothing before him, see the words melt, while he cleans them. Then he puts them back on, and everything is under control again, everything is sharp lines and focus.

But the afternoon Gryffindor win the House Cup, he's in the common room with the rest, a swirl of music and red-gold banners thumping in his head, and he doesn't think once about the Potions essay due for Monday. His glasses are a little skewed as he dances – more of a self-conscious shuffle, really – to _Sweep Me Away _(the one from the awful Cleansweep ads). Some shoot him anxious stares as the night presses on, but he smiles wryly and dances on, and forgets to dock points, and stumbles to bed with a steady rhythm throbbing behind his eyes, around three.

He's just drifting off, the sounds of Luther and the Loungedragons (which Dean Thomas, who knows about these things, reliably informs him is 'electro-punk, with prog-rock and psychobilly influences on the second LP') trembling through the floor, when the door slams open and the Quidditch Captain, severely inebriated, collapses onto his bed.

'Perce,' he says, and passes out.

It's oddly comforting, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, the cold mist of dawn stroking the window, a chill round his ankles. The party sounds like it's underwater – distant, and slow, a soothing rumble blending perfectly with Oliver's heavy breathing. This is nicer, more complete, than cleaning his glasses.

It's hours later, the languorous arc of the sun across the sky the only reminder, and Oliver wakes with a sound half between a groan and a sigh, and looks up at Percy, who forgets how sad his friend looks, sometimes. Not superficial sadness, like _oh shit I missed the rest of the party _or _oh that last goal was stupid_, but bleak grief at some unspeakable secret.

'Good time last night?' he tries lightly, reaching across to his bedside table to put his glasses on.

'What…I…uh…am I in your bed?' Oliver asks, and Percy marvels that this is the first time they've had this discussion, with the hard drinking that's become more and more a feature of the Quidditch season. He's never mentioned it, never taken points. It doesn't seem related to the rules, somehow.

'Well…_on _my bed. I'm surprised you made it up the stairs, really.'

It's not quite relief in Oliver's eyes, for which Percy is grateful. The faint fug of stale alcohol and happy sweat hangs in the air. Presently Oliver twists ungracefully around so he's sitting at the foot of Percy's bed, leaning queasily against a bedpost.

'You never tried out for the team, you know, mate.'

Percy blinks. 'No. I told you…my glasses. My mum would have slaughtered me if I'd broken them.'

'Harry wears glasses,' Oliver points out.

And he does. It's hard not to hate Harry, with his uncool, broken glasses, and his messy hair, and his casual, sudden friendship with Ron, and his skill on the pitch, and his ability to elicit sounds of sympathy and affection from his mother that are completely alien to Percy. Maybe Harry's the reason he never tried out – it wouldn't do to be in competition with The Boy Who Lived – it's the Gryffindor way, to step aside and let him have his blessed limelight (though the strain's getting to Ron, he can tell).

'Yeah. But. He's Harry.'

'Too true,' Oliver grins, the memory of that little, winking Snitch clouding his eyes. 'Perce, you know. Those glasses…you know, I can't remember you without them.'

'Neither can I.' Percy doesn't know why he's whispering. They're the only two people in the room, in the castle, in the world.

'I was jealous of you, you know…when you first started wearing them.' It's offhand, like a bullet casing falling to the floor.

'_Jealous_? Of _these_?'

'Yeah. You looked so bloody grownup. Couldn't understand why you'd still want to hang round with me.'

'I wasn't grownup,' Percy breathes. 'I'm not – I'm not – '

'It doesn't get more grownup than Head Boy of Hogwarts,' Oliver says stupidly, and in the moment in between they spontaneously think of Sirius Black and mass murder and Voldemort and pathetic orphans and their childhood screams in their ears.

'Wasn't grownup yesterday, anyway,' Oliver continues, looking down at the eiderdown to stop Percy voicing such deathly thoughts. 'Crying like a bairn. Stupid really. Just. Just a game, isn't it?'

Percy pauses for a heartbeat. 'Wish I cared enough about something to cry about it, Ol.'

It's clockwork, it's the Hogwarts Express, it's a book he's read ten times, it's his mother's favourite rant, it's motion and nothing's getting in the way, no convenient obstacles, no last-minute reprieves, as he watches (as though suspended above himself) Oliver reach up and take off his glasses. The pad of his thumb brushes the side of his nose and he suddenly becomes aware of his entire body, from the blush streaking his cheeks to his hands, pooling in the sheets. The birdsong outside is deafening.

He vaguely registers Oliver folding the arms of his glasses and placing them reverently on the bedside table, and feels vaguely uneasy about this, but the Quidditch Captain, still in his match robes, still radiating victory, is blurred at the edges, and Percy can't see the pupils of his eyes as he leans forwards and catches cold lips between his.

It's a stale kiss, a kiss that should have happened last night, with Percy flushed with excitement and Oliver dizzier than he'll ever be again, but the taste of old Firewhisky and the slight shiver of early morning is oddly perfect. Afterwards, two, three seconds later – it's enough, before they slouch off to shower and head to the library to tackle the Potions essay with uncertain electricity lingering and doom hovering above them – he thinks of that kiss in touch and taste, and can't quite recall the colours or the sights.

It's an unusual moment of warmth in a cold year, the year he falls apart. Sold his soul to the Ministry, Fred might say. Percy isn't sure he's got a soul to sell. And he's never been much of a one for bartering really, too caught up in exchange rates and contracts.

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_Gotta love a bit of angst. Review? _


	3. Chapter 3

_Just a short view of Percy's time at the Ministry this chapter - enjoy! xx_

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By the time he's worming his way up the Ministry, in those awful months cleaning up the Crouch affair, the headaches are daily occurrences. He wakes up with a tight feeling across his nose, pulsing above his ears, and the polystyrene cup of coffee, tasteless and steaming, from the vendor outside the Headquarters, only serves to stretch his skin further across his bursting skull.

The air in his cramped office is muggy and close, and the houseplants his mother sent him are withered and neglected, decaying gently on the sill of the smeared window. The day's a stream of paper clips and crumpled memos and wrinkled coffee rings on documents that should have been signed and sent weeks ago. He remembers Hogwarts, the knots he tied in his own stomach worrying about NEWTs – exams, and useless, crammed knowledge, with a war brewing outside, and concerns of far greater magnitude than Benson's Fourth Law of Transfiguration. The futility of it chokes him, and, not for the first time, he rues the hours he spent in the library, throwing away his childhood.

It's still a minor distraction, taking off his glasses and cleaning them, but every second is mapped out in admin and reports and rows of blinding figures, and he can ill afford the time spent staring into an incoherent distance. So his glasses stay obediently on his face, lodged in the natural ridge of his nose, the grime of London filmy across the lenses. At home – a rattling flat with a spotted mirror above the tiny sink, in a non-magical building with the stench of steam and cabbage floating up the stairwell – he takes off his glasses to brush his teeth, because his reflection looks younger that way. Almost dreamy, with the edges hazy – a mirage, a memory.

He doesn't feel like himself, these days, with the gnaw of guilt plaguing him, and the memory of his father's face still painful. He has things that carry on into his new, lonely life – the same hair, the same glasses, a paperweight Penelope gave him once, a postcard of Hogwarts. Oliver, when he thinks of him, belongs to the other life, the one of lumpy, colourful jumpers and rowdy family meals and silly, inconsequential things like exams.

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_Next chapter: The Battle of Hogwarts, through dusty, skewed lenses. Some actual P/O interaction, too!_


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